The great meth wars of 1975

Gilles Forget

Claude Ellefsen

   The Devil's Disciples gang dealt tons of drugs - specifically speed, more specifically crystal meth - around St. Louis Square.
  Squabbles within the gang led to about two dozen murders in 1975.
    The body count was largely the result of a rift between Gilles Forget and Claude Ellefsen. The gang's murderous ways was evident even before their friendship hit the rocks. Here's the timeline.

May 20, 1974: Claude Chamberland, 39, and his girlfriend, 22, were found shot and barbecued in a burned trailer home in Laval. Chamberland was a swindler who might have apparently offended his neighbour, speed king Claude Ellefsen, 27, (aka Johnny Halliday). Ellefsen's assistant Pierre McDuff likely committed the grisly deed.

Gilles Forget
exits the Iberville Brasserie

Jean Claude Arbour

Jacques Morin

Phillippe Beerns

July 21, 1974: two assassins walk into the Fontaine de Johannie restaurant near St. Louis Square and shoot pushers Jean-Claude Arbour, 26, and Jacques Morin, 26. Such was punishment for stepping on rival turf. One victim's brother, Jean-Paul Morin 21, (along with accomplice Jean-Guy Sirard, 22) sought immediate revenge for the deed and ended up shooting an innocent civil servant, Jean-Pierre Boiteau at 8251 Neuville in Anjou. It was a tragic case of mistaken identity.



October 10, 1974: Ginette Caron was found dead in a country field with a bullet in her head. It's believed she knew too much about the drug dealing done by the Devil's Disciples at St. Louis Square.

Pierre Saint-Jean 

November 28, 1974: Jean Viau, 49, who sold trailer homes in Laval disappeared. Cops believe he kept company with Ellefsen.  
   The war started full-blast when cops busted a Devil Disciples meth lab in Saint-Alexis-des-Monts in January 1975.
   A new lab was required, so Claude Ellefsen combined with Gilles Forget, 28, who had been recently released from jail for selling speed. They duo agree to chip in $22,000 each to build a new meth production facility.
   Ellefsen failed to provide his share. Conflict ensued between Ellefsen and Forget.
  Firstly, Forget's assistant Phillipe Beerens, 19, went to the Brasserie Iberville at 5195 Iberville and loudly threatened Ellefsen.

Phillippe Beerens

   January 19 1975: Beerens is found dead at his apartment at 6962 Azilda. (Two days later Richard Blass and his assistant Fernand Beaudet killed 13 at the Gargantua Bar at 1369 Beaubien E. and he was killed by police three days after that. The Gargantua affair was not considered directly related to the conflict, although Blass's brother Michel played a key role in this war a few months later.)

March 30: Forget plants a bomb at Ellefsen's cottage in Piedmont, injuring Ellefsen's bodyguard Pierre McDuff, 32. Ellefesen and his girlfriend Suzanne Patenaude are unharmed.

April 23: Ellefesen's faction places a car bomb in a Cadillac on Boyce St. in the east end. Gilles Auger, the car's owner 27, loses an eye.

April 26: Claude Brabant, 38, a Forget dealer who had recently switched sides, is found dead on a country road.

Joseph Minotti

April 29: Forget's gang shoots Ellefsen bodyguard Jean-Pierre Aspirot in a shopping center parking lot. They also target Ellefsen's top assistant Jose Martindale, 33, with a bomb at his home at 488 St. Francois in Blainville. Children discover the bomb which contained six sticks of dynamite and 32 ounces of nitroglycerin. It was dismantled before doing any harm.

May 9: The decomposed body of Real Girard of the Devil's Disciples was found floating in the St. Lawrence River.

Armand Auger

Guy Filion

May 17: Gaetan Poulin, 21, of 5765 Second Avenue in Rosemount is kidnapped after 10 p.m. He was a regular patron of the Brasserie Iberville.

May 28: Ellefsen's partner Guy Fillion, 25, is targeted with a hail of bullets at his home at 51 Sainte-Henriette in Argenteuil. His girlfriend Ginette Pelletier, 22, walks into the wall of flying lead and dies. The couple had spent the afternoon with her parents on De Gaspe Street in Montreal. Filion escapes. (The hit might have stemmed from a separate feud Fillion was having with cocaine dealers on Lajeunesse.) Filion was later shot by a drinking buddy in 1979 at a bar on Lajeunesse but survived to claim a $20,000 indemnity from the Victims of Crime Compensation Bureau.

Robert Landry and Gaetan Poulin

He was finally murdered August 9, 1983. He was a big loan shark and drug dealer and it was rumoured that he buried bundles of $100,000 near his Laurentian-area mansion.

Jean-Paul Mathurin

June 11: Five young Ellefsen associates are kidnapped from Brasserie Iberville and forced into a Cadillac. Istvan Kellner, Gaetan Angleheart, Dan Painchaud, Richard Gervais and Robert Landry were taken away. They were Ellefsen loyalists.

June 12: Ellefsen gets some revenge: Amid chants of in the head, in the head! at12:45 a.m. at the Brasserie Iberville Gilles Forget, and Pierre "Nap" Saint-Jean, 29 are killed, shot 10 and 8 times respectively by Ronald Proulx, Jean-Paul Mathurin, (waiter) Gilles Lavigne, (manager) and Michel "Mike" Blass (brother of Richard Blass). The gang - alledly paid $25,000 for the hit - arrived in fake moustaches and sunglasses but were immediately recognized. Mathurin, Armand Auger, Michel Blass and Roland Proulx were arrested and charged. The Brasserie's phone lines had been tapped and police were quick to nab the bunch. Blass, who had invited a welfare recipient customer to touch the dead bodies "they're still warm! Touch them!" was arrested at 5594 2 nd Avenue in Rosemount. He pleads self defense.'

Michel Blass

July 20: dealer Joseph Minotti, 20, of the Forget gang, is shot in the throat and killed by a 12 gauge gun in a drive by in front of the JJ Bar at 3270 Jean Talon East. (His friends Richard Boucher 17 and Daniel Lafortune were also slightly injured in the shooting).

Renee Larose

July 17: Renee Larose, 16, disappears. She was girlfriend of Pierre St-Jean, who had been killed along with Forget on June 12. On the same day Yvon Saint-Pierre, 20, another Forget-faction dealer is found dead. He might've been killed by his own side, as he appeared ready to talk about what happened to the five that disappeared.

July 25: The manager of the Brasserie d'Iberville opened the places up at 8:10 only to be confronted by an armed man with two henchmen. They forced him into the bathroom where 9 men and one women were already being held against their will, some handcuffed. The group noticed wires on the floor outside the bathroom and realized the place had been rigged to blow. The group rushed the exit but it was locked.  They managed to break it down. The bomb went off at 8:25 a.m. and blew up the Brasserie Ibervillete. The hostages escaped death by breaking down the bathroom doors and escaping prior to the blast. Cops blamed the Forget gang.

Ginette Pelletier

July 31: Ellefsen friend and bodyguard Pierre McDuff, 32, drove his Corvette out of the Chapleau street garage that he had been renting. Two men with a large red car were parked behind him. One came out and shot McDuff in the face. Cops told reporters that one man "shot (McDuff's) head right off" with a high-powered rifle.

Mario Saint Pierre and Jean-Paul Dubois

August 1975 Jean-Paul Dubois of the Dubois brothers gang brings Mario Saint Pierre and his girlfriend to his cottage north of Lachute where 11 people are on hand. Dubois is unhappy that Ellefsen is selling drugs in St. Louis Square, which he considers his gang's turf. Saint Pierre is friends with Ellefsen. He is interrogated and stabbed to death, according to later testimony from killer-turned-informant Donald Lavoie. His girlfriend Marie Talbot was then killed with an axe. Their bodies were never found. Dubois faces charges in the affair only 13 years later.

August 17: Ellefsen confidante Jean-Guy Giguere, 34, is shot and killed getting into his car. Some suggest Ellefsen had soured on him.

Injured man and dead woman from the Gaiete Bar 

 Sunday Aug. 24, 1:45 a.m.  1871 Belanger E. (NE corner of Cartier). A man entered the Bar La Gaiete bar and opened fire on a man and woman sitting at a table. The man, 17, was hit in his legs but survive to flee to his van outside, the same van in which Jean-Guy Giguere had been lured to his death a week earlier. The woman was hit in the face and killed. (19 months later a gunman shot shot five people dead at the same bar).

Aug. 24: Later that day at about 3:45 pm. Jean-Pierre Aspirot, 22, was killed at the Astro Bar Salon at 2650 Masson (where La Distillerie now sits). Bikers had been harassing the owner of the bar who decided to shoot Aspirot dead on that Sunday afternoon.

Aug 24: Two women from one gang got embroiled with three women from the other group at St. Lawrence and Guilbault. Two men intervened and one of them, Pierre Renaud, 19, was shot by another man.

Pierre McDuff

September 29 Pierre Barrette, 24, Ellefsen's new bodyguard, was found shot dead execution style at home on 26 th Avenue in Rosemount.
   A truce begins. After five months of tailing Ellefsen and partner Jose Martindale, police finally find the meth lab in Pointe Calumet. They find 22 pounds of crystal meth.
   We are not sure what happened to Ellefsen. According to federal prison officials, Ellefsen was sentenced to federal prison until 1983. It's possible he was released earlier.
   Police officers that handled the investigation include: Victor Judd, Normand Viens of the SQ, under Raymond Girard; Montreal police's Emile Boire, Jean-Jacques Adam, Gilbert Gagnon.


Feb 1976: After a lengthy investigation RCMP drug squad agents finally 516 29th Ave. and found other operations at 139 Larente Crescent. The duo were arrested.

Pointe Calumet lab

located the meth lab operated by Ellfesen and Martindale in Pointe Calument, right on the shores of what's now the Beach Club, as they seized a load of chemicals at

(References, Allo Police 8 June 1975, page 10, 22 June 1975, p. 8).